Station IDs and Subscription TV

[azumanga]

Back during the heyday of scrambled subscription TV in the 1970s and 1980s, were TV stations still required to identify themselves on or near the top of the hour?

I always thought that stations were exempt from doing so when the signal is scrambled, until I came across these ON-TV screengrabs and videoclips from WSNS in Chicago, which ID'd themselves on-screen during the films.

On a slightly-different tangent, I also noticed that black and white films during ON-TV were identified as such at least twice during a black and white film -- to my knowledge, no other station, subscription, cable or free, did this.

With on-screen intrusions like these, was it really worth paying upwards to $22.50 a month for the service (which is around $65 in today's dollars)?

 

[radioman148]

Back during the heyday of scrambled subscription TV in the 1970s and 1980s, were TV stations still required to identify themselves on or near the top of the hour?

I always thought that stations were exempt from doing so when the signal is scrambled, until I came across these ON-TV screengrabs and videoclips from WSNS in Chicago, which ID'd themselves on-screen during the films.

On a slightly-different tangent, I also noticed that black and white films during ON-TV were identified as such at least twice during a black and white film -- to my knowledge, no other station, subscription, cable or free, did this.

With on-screen intrusions like these, was it really worth paying upwards to $22.50 a month for the service (which is around $65 in today's dollars)?

I had ON-TV in the 70s and they did show the station breaks. My guess is they had to because WSNS was the over the air carrier for the service and even though you needed the converter box the signal was still traveling over the airwaves.

 

[mleach]

Back during the heyday of scrambled subscription TV in the 1970s and 1980s, were TV stations still required to identify themselves on or near the top of the hour?

I always thought that stations were exempt from doing so when the signal is scrambled, until I came across these ON-TV screengrabs and videoclips from WSNS in Chicago, which ID'd themselves on-screen during the films.

Washington and Baltimore had "Super TV" which had aired on DC's channel 50 and Baltimore's channel 54. I would imagine as far as the ID went, they did the same thing..though it could had been combined such as "....Super TV...WCQR Washington DC ..WNUV Baltimore". Now when one tunes in the channel and doesn't suscribe, yes you would get the scrambled picture but the audio was a sales pitch for Super TV followed by the station ID. Now before the programming began, what WCQR and WNUV did was interesting in their own right. More/less the entire time Super TV existed WCQR would just show a camera shot from thier transmitter of the "skyline" of Fairfax, Virginia ( even a shot of the I-495 beltway ) with some recorded tape saying "This is WCQR..channel 50 in Washington DC".

WNUV OTOH, they were a "bit" better. First they showed old movies and business news...and Jim Bakker. In 1984 though WNUV became a mix...your regular indie with reruns and movies. WNUV during the ids ( when they weren't Super TV ) did the pet thing. They would show a dog or a cat sitting in front of the camera with the captions "...meet REX" or "meet Ginger" while they played the jingle "...WNUV...Baltimore 54" or was it "channel 54 WNUV Baltimore"? Hmmmmmm.

Super TV ended in 1986.

With on-screen intrusions like these, was it really worth paying upwards to $22.50 a month for the service (which is around $65 in today's dollars)?

At the time they were despite the intrusions. What really helped ( it did with Super TV ) was those "deals" with the studios that HBO/Cinemax and Showtime/The Movie Channel had made back in the early 80s. When that happened, in order to see ALL of the Hollywood flicks one had to get both HBO AND Showtime for that but with Super TV, you got all the flicks from all the studios so one really did save money if they decided to stick with Super TV. Now exactly how much they saved, I don't know but staying with one ( Super TV ) rather than suscribing to all four ( HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and The Movie Channel ) I would imagine at the time it was quite a bit. Some even got the service for FREE since for some stupid reason Super TV refused to do business with some cities within the DC or Baltimore market. Places like Frederick, MD, Fredericksburg and even Manassas, VA even though people who lived in those places received bouth channel 50 and 54..quite well, Super TV still refused to do business with them. As a result many mom/pop TV shops had sold their own de-scrambling devices and interesting Super TV did NOTHING to stop them either. As a result I bet 30%, maybe even half of the Super TV were watching...for free !!!

Also I have been told by several over the years that Super TV late at night tend to show hardcore porn. Not the "soft core" stuff one would see on Cinemax late at night but hardcore ..like John Holmes/"Debbie Does Dallas"/Marylin Chambers and "Behind the Green Door"..that sort of thing.

 

[KeithE4]

Back during the heyday of scrambled subscription TV in the 1970s and 1980s, were TV stations still required to identify themselves on or near the top of the hour?

IIRC, the Chicago stations (WSNS/44, WPWR-WBBS/60 and WFBN/66) used an audio-only ID (on their "normal" sound carrier) during scrambled transmissions.

 

[radioman148]

Back during the heyday of scrambled subscription TV in the 1970s and 1980s, were TV stations still required to identify themselves on or near the top of the hour?

IIRC, the Chicago stations (WSNS/44, WPWR-WBBS/60 and WFBN/66) used an audio-only ID (on their "normal" sound carrier) during scrambled transmissions.

It's been a long time, but the two I remember watching in Chicago were ON-TV carried on WSNS-44, and Sportsvision. I don't remember which TV channel carried sportsvision's signal.

 

[KeithE4]

Back during the heyday of scrambled subscription TV in the 1970s and 1980s, were TV stations still required to identify themselves on or near the top of the hour?

IIRC, the Chicago stations (WSNS/44, WPWR-WBBS/60 and WFBN/66) used an audio-only ID (on their "normal" sound carrier) during scrambled transmissions.

It's been a long time, but the two I remember watching in Chicago were ON-TV carried on WSNS-44, and Sportsvision. I don't remember which TV channel carried sportsvision's signal.

SportsVision was on WBBS-TV (nights - most events) and WPWR-TV (before 7 PM, mostly daytime Sox games), then sharing Channel 60. Spectrum was on then-WFBN Channel 66.

SportsVision became just another ON-TV program service (plus cable, where it was full-time on its own channel) in 1984 on Channel 44 - ironic since WSNS-TV had been the home of the Sox and Bulls from 1973 to '80. IIRC, this was when WBBS sold out and WPWR took over Channel 60 fulltime, becoming a mainstream indie.

 

[radioman148]

Back during the heyday of scrambled subscription TV in the 1970s and 1980s, were TV stations still required to identify themselves on or near the top of the hour?

IIRC, the Chicago stations (WSNS/44, WPWR-WBBS/60 and WFBN/66) used an audio-only ID (on their "normal" sound carrier) during scrambled transmissions.

It's been a long time, but the two I remember watching in Chicago were ON-TV carried on WSNS-44, and Sportsvision. I don't remember which TV channel carried sportsvision's signal.

SportsVision was on WBBS-TV (nights - most events) and WPWR-TV (before 7 PM, mostly daytime Sox games), then sharing Channel 60. Spectrum was on then-WFBN Channel 66.

SportsVision became just another ON-TV program service (plus cable, where it was full-time on its own channel) in 1984 on Channel 44 - ironic since WSNS-TV had been the home of the Sox and Bulls from 1973 to '80. IIRC, this was when WBBS sold out and WPWR took over Channel 60 fulltime, becoming a mainstream indie.

Thanks for refreshing my memory. I do remember in the 70s WSNS used to use the slogan
White Sox Network Sports.

 

[DToTheJ]

I had ON-TV in the 70s and they did show the station breaks. My guess is they had to because WSNS was the over the air carrier for the service and even though you needed the converter box the signal was still traveling over the airwaves.

Same in New York with Channel 60/WHT/SelecTV. Ah, the days of trying to manipulate the scrambled signal... :

 

[radioman148]

I had ON-TV in the 70s and they did show the station breaks. My guess is they had to because WSNS was the over the air carrier for the service and even though you needed the converter box the signal was still traveling over the airwaves.

Same in New York with Channel 60/WHT/SelecTV. Ah, the days of trying to manipulate the scrambled signal... :

I remember those days well. If you had a tunable VCR you could tune just a little off frequency and unscramble the picture.

 

[KeithE4]

I had ON-TV in the 70s and they did show the station breaks. My guess is they had to because WSNS was the over the air carrier for the service and even though you needed the converter box the signal was still traveling over the airwaves.

Same in New York with Channel 60/WHT/SelecTV. Ah, the days of trying to manipulate the scrambled signal... :

I remember those days well. If you had a tunable VCR you could tune just a little off frequency and unscramble the picture.

That worked too, but it requried the type of VCR that used the thumwheels to preset the channels.

Turned off the AFC and used the thumbwheel to slightly offset the scrambled channel. This cancelled out the sine wave that they used to scramble the picture. It was good for ON-TV and SportsVision, but not Spectrum, which used a better scrambling technique.

I was able to watch Sox games that way, getting the sound off the radio (no delay at all). Better than nothing. ;D

 

[radioman148]

I had ON-TV in the 70s and they did show the station breaks. My guess is they had to because WSNS was the over the air carrier for the service and even though you needed the converter box the signal was still traveling over the airwaves.

Same in New York with Channel 60/WHT/SelecTV. Ah, the days of trying to manipulate the scrambled signal... :

I remember those days well. If you had a tunable VCR you could tune just a little off frequency and unscramble the picture.

That worked too, but it requried the type of VCR that used the thumwheels to preset the channels.

Turned off the AFC and used the thumbwheel to slightly offset the scrambled channel. This cancelled out the sine wave that they used to scramble the picture. It was good for ON-TV and SportsVision, but not Spectrum, which used a better scrambling technique.

I was able to watch Sox games that way, getting the sound off the radio (no delay at all). Better than nothing. ;D

That's exactly what I did to watch Sox games. Also could get some movies from ON-TV, but no sound.

 

[oldtimeradio]

Here in Phoenix, KNXV used to run hourly IDs during on the ON TV subscription programming, but dropped them after they found out that they didn't need to run the ID.

Was it worth the cost? Cable didn't cover all of Phoenix for quite some time, so it was better than watching older movies broken up by commercials on the regular channels. A lot of the movies I didn't care for, but there was usually something good to watch. Even the extra cost of the daily After Dark Adults Only movies was pretty good.

Mike

 

[zman]

A litle off topic but has anyone ever found a transiton video for sportsvistion chicago when they would transition from WPWR TV to sportsvision. There are some transition videos on you tubo of many of the stations going from commercial mode to scrambled mode but I have not found an for sportsvision.